Joe Nocera: In Chicago, itís a mess, all right

Thousands of public school teachers march for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012 in downtown Chicago. Teachers walked off the job Monday for the first time in 25 years over issues that include pay raises, classroom conditions, job security and teacher evaluations. (AP Photo/Sitthixay Ditthavong)

Sitthixay Ditthavong, AP

Our take: The status quo is unacceptable in a school district with terrible results (Chicago). New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, often a skeptic of school reform initiatives, notes that the Chicago school strike shows that we are in the midst of a nationwide education crisis.

So said Karen Lewis, the fiery president of the Chicago Teachers Union, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel named a new chief executive of the citys sprawling school system, the third largest in the nation.

It was April 2011. The new man was Jean-Claude Brizard, who had cut his teeth working with one of the countrys best-known school reformers, Joel Klein in New York City, before becoming superintendent of schools in Rochester. There he promoted charter schools and merit pay, pushed for performance standards and so infuriated the teachers union that it overwhelmingly gave him a vote of no confidence two months before he left for Chicago.

Popular Comments

California, where the total state and local
governments may be as much as $1 trillion in debt. Two major cities just
declared bankruptcy and more are lining up to do the same. And then they want
to tell Utah how to
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6:36 a.m. Sept. 12, 2012

Top comment

procuradorfiscal

Tooele, UT

From the article -- "In Chicago, about 60 percent of public school students
graduate from high school. The percentage who graduate from college before the
age of 25 is appalling: somewhere around 6 percent."

"pro" shouldn't worry. Utah teachers will understand that morw
schools have to be built, and that doing so means little or no pay hikes for
them. They will continue to seek better working conditions in the old fashioned
way - by leaving
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